An Apology

by Cameron Slater on September 12, 2012 at 1:00pm

Yesterday I blogged about some pretty awful comments from Beau Murrah, on that post which ended up with 139 comment, some from him and his pals. I also had extensive email correspondence with him that showed an arrogance and lack of remorse that was breath-taking.

So when I received this email in the early hours of the morning I was surprised to say the least. I am dis-inclined to removed the original post, simply because of the nature of the comments yesterday and the correspondence. I am pleased he has made a donation. I will take advice on whether or not the original post should remain.

When I say NFWAB I really, really mean it.

From: Beau Murrah

To Cam Slater

Cameron,

I have come to realise you are correct. My comments alluding to suicide were and are unacceptable to be said to anyone including yourself. I should know better. I don’t want to troll at all and most definitely not in such a manner ever again. I have just donated $200 of my own money to the Mental Health Foundation of NZ as some kind of atonement.

Regarding mental health I have also realised that this whole episode and perhaps a significant part of my online behaviour in recent times has not been good for it. I thought I was some ‘hilarious troll’ for a moment, bulletproof. I felt like it.

Somehow in my mind I have gotten this attitude that just because I might severely disagree with some persons political views or character it somehow makes it ‘justified’ to troll them in such a way on the internet as if it is somehow a different moral universe. Its unhealthy and the feeling doesn’t last. I didn’t sleep well tonight and ended up having an argument with my girlfriend who is very supportive of me, whom I never really argue with generally. I don’t want to have this happen again.

Now for my own mental health I am going to ask something of you. I am going to ask you to please remove your blog post about me. This is probably quite rare for you to ever do for anyone. All I can suggest is that despite the large comment feedback compared to the other more serious topics on your blog about politics the one post about some university student troll won’t really be missed or particularly noticed when its gone.

I can only ask you take my word for it that I have learned from this… I don’t want any part of this trolling business anymore regardless. As much as I tried to hand-wave it off in my mind this google prominence will provide a barrier to employment and some mental health issues of their own. I am asking you to mercy me that.

Regards Beau.

They didn’t get to me with a proper receipt yet but I guess well I can only also ask you take my word for the donation:

UPDATE: Commenters have asked that now Beau Murrah has apologised for his offensive comments that I should remove the original post. However, as I believe in context, removing this post really isn’t an option as it would remove context. To remove it would only leave an apology hanging without the context in which it was given. That could lead to further injustice as people could assume that something far worse was said.

Therefore after spending a day thinking about it I have decided to leave the original post in place, but have added an explanation similar to this so that full context of the situation can be understood.

As one of my commenters has noted I am an advocate of owning your own shit. I don’t hide my past posts, even though some of them are terribly embarrassing and re-reading them is sometimes just awful, the fact is that I wrote those and I should own what I did and said int he past. This is one of those situations that should serve as an example to all.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.